Seychelles

The Military and the Government

People's Armed Forces troops of MadagascarCourtesy Thomas P. Ofcansky

After he came to power in 1975, Ratsiraka promised to
bring
about a "socialist revolution." As part of this policy,
Ratsiraka
enlarged and reorganized the security forces to make them
appropriate for a "people's army" in a "socialist
revolutionary"
state. In 1975 he renamed the National Army the People'a
Armed
Forces (Forces Armées Populaires--FAP) and expanded its
mission.
Henceforth, the FAP engaged in civic-action programs and
spread
ideological education in the countryside. Between 1975 and
1980,
the FAP doubled in size.

This reorganization diluted the power of the former
National
Army, which owed little loyalty to Ratsiraka. To prevent
the FAP
from challenging his authority, Ratsiraka started
transferring
able and experienced officers from troop command
responsibilities
to more senior, but less powerful, positions. Invariably,
the new
posts were in the inspector general's section of the
Office of
the President and in various Ministry of Defense
committees that
studied how the FAP could best facilitate national
development.

Despite these changes, the FAP contributed little to
the
country's "socialist revolution" and remained a
potentially
important political player. Nevertheless, Ratsiraka,
relying on
manipulation and intimidation, retained almost absolute
control
of the armed forces until the growth of the pro-democracy
movement in the early 1990s. Pro- and anti-democracy
factions
emerged in the FAP and many other state security services.
Clashes among these factions added to the political
turmoil
sweeping through Madagascar, which eventually doomed the
Ratsiraka regime.

Under the Ratsiraka regime, the FAP, in conjunction
with the
Ministry of Defense, annually assessed the military's
needs. The
Ministry of Defense then sent budget recommendations to
Ratsiraka, who made final budget decisions. With the
formation of
the FAP in 1975, the cost of maintaining the military
establishment became a greater burden on the national
budget.
However, after the Cold War ended and foreign military
assistance
declined, the Malagasy defense budget also decreased from
more
than US$101 million in 1979 to about US$36 million in
1991.